


Clarity

by hoemione



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Cat, Cats, Domesticity, F/M, Mentions of Abel Gideon, Mentions of Hannibal Lecter - Freeform, Pets, Scars, That's how timelines work right, This was supposed to just be about a cat and then it got out of hand, idek what this is help me, mentions of past violence, more than a story at least, post-Gideon but pre-Lass, post-belly scar but pre-face scar, really a character piece, soft chilty warm chilty, spoiler warning i guess?, trigger warning: brief mentions of violence, trigger warning: scars, well a kitten so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 08:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7427014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoemione/pseuds/hoemione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe their broken bodies had found each other so they could prevent the cracks in each other's hearts from becoming breaks as well.</p><p>Or; a story about a relationship that might seem unlikely but feels natural.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clarity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Negasonic_faith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Negasonic_faith/gifts).



> I wrote this about a kitten headcannon and it got out of hand so I'm not even sure what this is, really, and was told to post it here.  
> My Frederick Chilton is hella bi and I forgot if I allude to that but like if I did you now know why.

Claire had stumbled into his life the way all good things were said to.  
(At least that's what Frederick had always been told.)  
(He had never quite experienced anything good before Claire.)  
He had met her on one of his more recent explorations into the world of vegetarian restaurants, where she had accidentally spilled most of her smoothie on his new shoes, and he had realised that surprisingly, he did not mind too much once she offered a reconciling coffee date.  
Claire was the type of woman he would never have gone for himself - young, short, and delicate, beautiful in a way that seemed to place her into a different era. Most of all, she was joyful. Almost painfully optimistic at times, and with a smile that made him feel as if the sun was shining on his face.  
She had seemed like a picture far too perfect as they had spent hours talking over more and more cups of coffee, and in conclusion he had banned the idea of her from his head as soon as it had appeared. And then he had still asked her to meet again. And she had said yes.  
(Nobody had said yes to him in a long time, and he was not expecting it.)  
Frederick discovered on that coffee date that Claire was a vegan, and that she had been for a good while, which she told him almost apologetically. This, he noticed, suited him more than just fine - no animal products meant an even smaller risk of accidental human products. He discovered later on that she was also a fantastic cook, managing to magically transform the most boring ingredients into a delicious meal in less than half an hour, and while he had long since the accident thought himself a passable cook, she surpassed him by far, and he found that for once, he didn't mind being second best. Maybe as a consequence, he felt more comfortable in his shoes and the new, slightly more understated and less Hannibal-esque suits he had taken to wearing.  
Claire had welcomed him into her life, and so seamlessly fitted herself into his, that he felt like he could not remember a time before her.  
Claire shared his profession, had once shared a line of work not too dissimilar from his, she told him one evening, and with shaking fingers she lifted her sleeve to show jagged scars, almost invisible on the pale skin, and a matching one severing her right collarbone and travelling down when she tugged down her shirt. She told him of a patient that had tried to stab her with the needle intended to calm him, and that night, he reverently kissed each harsh line. He realised that she was not too perfect like he had thought but rather she was perfect for him.  
(Even Claire was imperfect, in a way, and maybe their broken bodies had found each other so they could prevent the cracks in each other's hearts from becoming breaks as well.)  
(Her soul, he reasoned, was even more flawless for it.)  
She never once asked about his own, just offered her story, and she fell asleep with her hand unconsciously over his scar, and for once he didn't feel it burn as he lay awake in the dark. He held her until the sun started rising again, and his chest felt tight in the most pleasant way when she pressed her body closer to his in her sleep.  
(He is sure, looking back, that that night he truly fell in love with her.)  
Frederick told her about his scar the week after, and she was the first person not to say anything in realisation of its existence. She held him tight to her and buried herself into him, placing kisses over every inch of skin she could reach. He grabbed her like a dying man would his salvation, and in a way, he supposed, he was and she was that for him. He held her with the knowledge that she understood and that she _cared_ , and they let silence waft around them like a mutual understanding of what it felt like to wonder if your body suffered because your brain betrayed it in its arrogant notion of omniscience.  
(She later confided that she thought him brave to stay in his field, and he confided he had never been called brave before.)  
Most of all, Claire was simply _there_. He realised soon he had become dependent on her presence, on the knowledge that she was his and he hers.  
(It frightened him, until he remembered that it was Claire.)  
It seemed only natural for him to ask her to move in with him. He had set out a series of reasons - his house was closer to the practice she worked in, and in Midtown rather than out in Brooklyn, the gated community provided more security and calm, the rent for her apartment was ridiculously high. She laughed and said she would have agreed without a list of pros, but that in future she expected power point presentations.  
She moved in quickly, and then changed everything slowly. It started with small things - candles on the mantle of the fireplace, her kitchen utensils, a painting she loved. Then there was an armchair, and its reading table, in the corner of his living room. Eventually she broke and asked him if she could redecorate - "just the tiniest bit; it sometimes seems so intimidating in here" - and since he was, as he had long discovered, never much inclined to tell her no, he agreed.  
A few weeks later, he found her painting the living room, and eventually, his house looked nothing like before and everything like what he thought he could live in forever. Her touch eliminated the fears that had lurked in corners, painted over and replaced by books, and the house he had had gotten and even, for some time, stayed in out of pride became the source of his comfort.  
Spring came, and Claire took to gardening, not stopping until the smell of roses was ever present, and apple trees came in the fall.  
The coming winter, Frederick contemplated asking Claire to marry him, but never dared to.

The cat came in early January.  
Claire had long joked he was essentially a cat, and he knew she had grown up with pets, so he might have expected the cat. He had not.  
"I found a box of kittens on the street today," she told him over a dinner of vegetable curry pie.  
Only one of the kittens had survived the cold, and the vet had given him good chances provided he would be given warm care. He would not survive in a shelter.  
"I love that kitten," she said, and he knew whatever argument he might have had was struck invalid, because tough as Dr Frederick Chilton might think himself, he was helpless when it came to a short blonde with a medical degree and the softest of smiles.  
"When were you planning to pick him up?" He asked instead, and that night, he thought that he might not mind a cat too much if this was the outcome of accepting one into his home. After all, cats were quiet, and didn't need much. He could arrange himself around one, he thought, as soon as it didn't step foot into his office. If it made Claire happy.  
He soon discovered he was wrong. The cat was loud - "He's too young to be apart from his mother, Frederick, he is calling for her, that poor thing." - and, once coaxed out from underneath the grandfather clock, developed the highly irritating habit of jumping at Frederick, making a home on his shoulder, and cuddling into his neck.  
He had insisted on naming the cat, if he already had no word in the decision of getting it, and in a bout of irony and wit he named it Kidney, because he was missing one, and Claire had once called the kitten a small bean.  
Kidney soon showed who his favourite was - it was Claire - and found out that the chair in Frederick's office was a great sleeping place for a kitten.  
Needless to say, Frederick and Kidney were not on the best of terms, only agreeing on their mutual love for Claire.  
(Frederick pondered if he was a dog person, because he felt he disliked the cat unnaturally much.)  
It was that strained relationship - a mostly one sided love and mutual acceptance solely for the benefit of the lady of the house - that made it especially difficult when Claire left, like one time in March.  
She was at a congress for paediatric counselling, and since it was nowhere near his field and she would be back within the weekend, Frederick stayed at the house. With Kidney.  
(In one of his more sardonic moments, in front of the fireplace with a glass of red wine, he mused that even if he didn't have his other half around him, at least he still had two kidneys in his home.)  
Kidney was as unhappy as Frederick felt, only in a far more vocal way.  
Frederick muttered about the blasted, whiny cat for about ten minutes until he realised the crying would probably not stop, and Kidney had moved to the bedroom, presumably to sleep on Claire's pillow, so the sounds were almost silenced.  
The almost silent living room now seemed almost suffocating, and he realised he had become far too dependant on a person - a woman, years younger than him, no less - and that the concept of being alone felt foreign.  
(Frederick went to bed early, but definitely not because he found nothing to do with himself in the empty house.)  
(This also definitely was not something that had occurred before.)  
At night, he woke to Kidney pawing at the bedroom door, and as he patted over to the door, he rubbed his eyes, internally already preparing a monologue on his complaints about the cat.  
He opened the door and scowled at the offending pet, who looked up at him with big, amber eyes. It offered a small meow and he grunted in response. Kidney then weaseled through his legs and into the bedroom. Knowing he would never find a cat in a dark bedroom, Frederick sighed and went back to bed.  
When he woke again, it was to a warm, fluffy body pressing itself against his stomach.  
He growled down at the cat, who offered a small whine.  
The cat was far too dependent on Claire, he decided. Granted, this was the longest they had been alone together - and without her - but this behaviour was unnerving to the extreme. Frederick did not cuddle.  
(Frederick did not cuddle with anyone who wasn't his girlfriend.)  
After Kidney did not reply to his question of why he was there, Frederick sighed and looked at the cat, who cuddled further into him and closed his eyes again.  
The cat was lonely, he concluded, and probably rather heartbroken. Cats did not understand the concept of someone coming back soon; they understood that someone had left. Claire was the one who usually fed Kidney, who played with him, and on whose lap he rested in the evenings.  
(Frederick could understand the concept of that, since his life had become something not too dissimilar.)  
Their happiness was, albeit in different ways, irreparably entwined with that of Claire (and her existence) and they both didn't mind until they were separated from her. Frederick realised that, much like the cat's, Claire was also his life. "I guess we aren't too different, you and I," he mused to the cat, and resolved to get the pale gold band with the teardrop diamond back from his bank vault as soon as possible.  
Then, he pushed the cat away just a little, for good measure.  
(As soon as he was asleep, the cat was back where it had been.)


End file.
